Maunal Labor has a 411-style format minus the organization. There are TONS of skaters... big names, little names, some have long parts, some have parts consisting of only one trick. It's a mixed bag, with some pranks thrown in before various featured parts. The video mainly consists of technical street tricks, but a short vert segment is also sandwiched in. Throughout the video, small chunks of previously released footage (such as Tony Hawk's 900) are shown. The video concludes with a pretty lengthy slam section. The sounds of Manual Labor are mainly of a rap/hip hop variety.

January 31, 2002

When I first saw the cover of Manual Labor it hurt my head. I guess maybe I've never seen a skateboarder dressed so freshly, while matching his cartoony skateboard in loc'd-out orange pants. His deck looked very menacing by its "Vanilla Ice meets candy raver type" pose. But upon insertion of the video, my head stopped hurting because the skating was pretty fucking good. The street tricks are definitely high-caliber, some rather... groundbreaking. They seem to separate from the normal 50-50 handrail everyone has seen before. I probably could claim that anyone into the Shorty's, Osiris and maybe Zoo York vibe would get into this more then I did. Very techy.

All right, I have several big complaints with Manual Labor. The least that could have been done was making sure it looked just a hair better than some amateurish hack of a video. The filming is sub par at best and the special effects make me want to drink bleach. Paired with music that feels totally mismatched with the skating, I shouldn’t even waste my time writing this. However, Kevin Davis' part is good enough to save this video from utter failure. Adam Louder's part is good too, as he does hardflip backside lips like nothing. Dan Pageau has magic powers or so I'm told. He has this compact but cool style and can do any flip trick out of a slide or grind. The bottom line: this video is manual labor on the eyes.